Pope Leo Begins a New Catechism Series Dedicated to Vatican II

I'm reminded of an old joke. The Holy Trinity are discussing VII. The Holy Ghost remarks, "I wasn't there. My invitation must have been lost in the mail".

From LifeSiteNews

By Emily Mangiaracina

Pope Leo on Wednesday praised the ‘liturgical reform’ launched by Vatican II that laid the groundwork for the revolutionary Novus Ordo Missae, the new Mass.

Pope Leo XIV announced Wednesday that he is beginning a catechesis series to “closely” study the Second Vatican Council, which many priests and scholars have affirmed to be in need of correction.

“We are beginning a new catechesis series dedicated to the Second Vatican Council and to a fresh reading of its Documents,” Leo wrote in an X post. “The Council’s Magisterium remains even today the North Star guiding the Church’s journey.”

“Closely studying the Council documents will help us to be attentive interpreters of the signs of the times, and to proclaim the Gospel to all,” Leo said Wednesday during his general audience.

In Leo’s strong support for Vatican II, he aligns himself with Pope Francis, who described the Council as “a visit of God to His Church,” and as “irreversible.”

The pope has not given further details thus far on the forthcoming “catechesis” of Vatican II. However, during his general audience on Wednesday, he highlighted aspects of the Council that he highly esteems.

For example, Leo praised the “liturgical reform” launched by Vatican II, which laid the groundwork for the revolutionary Novus Ordo Missae, the new Mass. The Council “set in motion an important liturgical reform by placing at the center the mystery of salvation and the active and conscious participation of the entire People of God,” Leo said in his general audience.

Liturgist and author Dr. Peter Kwasniewski has pointed out that the idea articulated in the Second Vatican Council’s Sacrosanctum Concilium that “In the restoration and promotion of the sacred liturgy, this full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else” is backward.

“It cannot escape our notice that this text turns things on their head,” Kwasniewski remarked in 2019. “Where Pius X had said that what should be ‘provided for before everything else’ is the ‘sanctity and dignity of the temple,’ Vatican II says that ‘the aim to be considered before all else’ is ‘full and active participation by all the people.’ In doing so, it inverts the hierarchy of goods. Now the worship of God and its right condition becomes secondary to the people’s involvement.”

Pope Leo also on Wednesday lauded Vatican II for being responsible for a Church committed to “seeking the truth through the way of ecumenism, interreligious dialogue and dialogue with people of good will,” as if the Church needs to seek truth outside of Herself. The idea that the fullness of the truth is not found within the Catholic Church is heretical.

Leo’s description of the Second Vatican Council during his general audience and in his social media post as the “guiding star” of the Church’s path suggests he sees this council as surpassing in importance every other council of the Church, which is especially significant given that Vatican II appeared to contradict previous magisterial councils in certain respects.

Prelates such as Bishop Athanasius Schneider and Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò have pointed to errors in the Second Vatican Council regarding religious freedom and other religions, and in doing so have been supported by many priests and scholars.

For example, Bishop Schneider has said Lumen Gentium is “wrong” and errs by suggesting that Christians and Muslims participate together in the same act of adoration when it states that “Muslims, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God.”

It errs because Muslims worship on a natural level, at the same level of anyone who adores God with the “natural light of reason,” whereas Christians adore God on a supernatural level as His adopted children “in the truth of Christ and in the Holy Spirit.” 

“This is a substantial difference,” Schneider observed. He explained that the use of the phrase “with us” represents a relativization of the act of adoration of God and also of Christians’ “sonship.” 

In addition, Muslims reject the Trinity, which they consider to be an idolatrous idea. Christ made clear that “whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me” (Luke 10:16) and “no one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

Schneider criticized texts suggesting that Buddhists and Hindus can attain illumination on their own, without “the grace of Christ,” as a heresy. Nostra Aetate claims that “in Hinduism, men contemplate the divine mystery,” and that Buddhism “teaches a way by which men, in a devout and confident spirit, may be able either to acquire the state of perfect liberation, or attain, by their own efforts or through higher help, supreme illumination.”

The German prelate has also criticized Dignitatis Humanae for putting forth “a theory never before taught by the constant Magisterium of the Church, i.e., that man has the right founded in his own nature, ‘not to be prevented from acting in religious matters according to his own conscience, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits.’” 

Archbishop Viganò agreed with Bishop Schneider in his criticism of the Second Vatican Council, noting that Vatican II’s formulation of religious freedom “contradict[s] the testimony of Sacred Scripture and the voice of Tradition, as well as the Catholic Magisterium which is the faithful guardian of both.”

It is also noteworthy that Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio, condones “prayers in common” with our “separated brethren” in “certain special circumstances, such as the prescribed prayers “for unity,” and during ecumenical gatherings.”

However, the Councils of the Church have repeatedly made clear that Catholics cannot pray with heretics or schismatics, let alone those of other religious practices:

• “One must neither pray nor sing psalms with heretics, and whoever shall communicate with those who are cut off from the communion of the Church, whether clergy or layman: let him be excommunicated.” — Council of Carthage
• “No one shall pray in common with heretics and schismatics.” — Council of Laodicea
• If any ecclesiastic or layman shall go into the synagogue of the Jews or to the meeting houses of the heretics to join in prayer with them, let them be deposed and deprived of communion. If any bishop or priest or deacon shall join in prayer with heretics, let him be suspended from communion. — II Council of Constantinople